The Bode Museum presents the monumental work of British artist Mark Alexander in its magnificent Baroque Hall, showing three of his oversized paintings.

For the first time the museum shows the result of an interesting dialogue between what inspired the artist: The Mannheim High Altar by Johann Paul Egell (1691-1752) and its contemporary visual result.

Tracing back the history of the altar, it was created between 1738 and 1741/42 for the Catholic parish church and was later brought by the Royal collections in Berlin to be displayed at the Martin-Gropius-Bau museum. In 1930 the altar moved place again and enter in the Deutsches Museum. There, it escaped the Second World War and since then has been exhibited at the Bode Museum.

Its rudimentary character held a great fascination for Mark Alexander especially the two mourning figures of Adam and Eve, portrayed as children. They seem to lament not only the self-sacrifice of Christ, but also the loss of this high altar.

The result by the British artist is an impressive paint with dark-red color that enhance the martyrdom of Christ but also the hours of war. An intricate connexion done by the use of oil on the silk-screen print technique which gives more intense aura to its work.

The two other paintings are two versions of the nine-panel work "Red Mannheim I" presented here.

All three of the paintings exhibited here were shown at the Collection Bastian in Berlin in 2014. Mark Alexander, whose works are to be found in major private and public collections, lives and works in London and Berlin. At the moment he is working as an artist in residence at the Beethoven House in Bonn.